


Viper, Spider, Phoenix

by lizzieraindrops



Category: Elementary (TV), Kill Bill (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Dark Past, Dark!Joan, Elementary season 1 spoilers, Eye Contact, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Identity Issues, Platonic Relationships, Repressed Memories, Role Reversal, canon compliant up to a point, canon fusion, character fusion, platonic intimacy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1911912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"</p><p>When the first of criminals becomes a doctor, she sometimes becomes the greatest of heroines.</p><p>Joan Watson has a very dark past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red and Yellow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr Joaniarty Week prompt: Rival Crime Lords - though I've taken some liberties with the timelines of Crime Lordship.
> 
> Thanks to capitalnineteen and casiha on tumblr for beta'ing!

_This time would be different. This time, she would win. This time it would end._

_Joan closed her eyes and felt the wind stream through her hair, sending it fluttering around her. She faced the criss-crossing struts and girders of the Queensboro Bridge, leaning back against the outer rail of the deserted pedestrian lane. Though the looming bulk of the upper level threw immense shadows over much of the half-enclosed corridor, Joan found a spot where the light streamed diagonally through the struts from the west. She felt its warmth on her face, and her eyelids were backlit with the sharp orange of sunset._

_Was it another life when they last met, or just another time in this life? Joan doesn't know. All she knows is that she will not accept another defeat at the hands of her enemy. She might call herself a spider now instead of a snake, but Joan recognizes her. Ever since the moment she whipped around, golden hair flying in a room full of paintings, and Joan was assailed by incoherent memories that she couldn't place into any context._

 

***

 

The room was bright with sunlight and colorful oils on canvas, but Joan felt as cold as if she stood in deep morning shadows. It wasn't just lingering apprehension about the grisly horrors she and Sherlock might have found inside this deserted house. It wasn't shock at finding Irene alive, or even sympathetic pain for the anguish Sherlock must have been feeling. It was something about the woman herself, the sight of red paint smeared on her ankle like blood; it inundated Joan with a wave of sudden terror and hatred.

Her first instinct was shame, suppression: why on earth would she have such a visceral, negative reaction to someone she had never met? (Or had she? Those golden-yellow curls were so familiar.) What on earth about sweet but broken Irene could inspire such cold anger and fear? And yet, the way she had dug her nails into Sherlock's cheek had given Joan chills, and she felt those fingers as if they were tearing at her own scalp. Surely it couldn't be jealousy, she told herself. And it wasn't; the creeping horror that grew with every hour had nothing at all to do with Sherlock and everything to do with the way that woman would not quite meet Joan's eyes.

The three of them had made it to the hospital, despite Sherlock being shattered, Irene in shock, and Joan contending with her wildly careening mind, plagued by a panicked sense of déja vu. While Sherlock told the hospital's doctors as much as he knew of Irene's medical history, Joan took the opportunity to try and gather herself privately. She walked a ways down the dimly lit hall, footsteps echoing. She took the chair by the window in the tiny rest area, but the cloud cover rolling in meant it was no brighter there. She closed her eyes, did her best to ignore the input from her auditory nerves, and tried to remember.

It was like a word on the tip of her tongue, just out of reach but inching closer. White: a thin layer of snow. The hollow clack of light-density wood: bamboo. Yellow fabric, yellow hair. The slosh of a small amount of water: perhaps a fountain. The glint of light on metal: steel, a long piece of steel. A _sword?_

Joan's eyes snapped open. Her heart was pounding with the memory of red-hot pain lancing through her head just above the temples. She'd known there was darkness in her past, but until this moment, she had forgotten that the darkness was not made of the mere shadows of her malpractice. It was soaked in violence and corruption and crusted with deep red, red, red blood.

And Irene had been a part of it.

 

***

 

Joan was almost grateful that Sherlock was so distraught and attentive to Irene, because he didn't seem to notice that Joan was losing her mind. It wasn't that her mind was going to pieces as much as it was coming back to her a piece at a time. Memories streamed in faster and faster, flooding her brain. She had convinced herself that she was a good person now, leaving her past far behind her and deliberately forgotten - or so she had thought. Try as she might to stop, she kept unconsciously running her fingers through her hair, tracing the scars of her rebirth over and over on her scalp. Sherlock was bound to notice soon. Even if he didn't, she had to tell him. If Joan was not all that she seemed, then Irene couldn't be, not when she remembered her from her bloody past.

Joan had been equally relieved and horrified when Moriarty revealed herself. She wasn't imagining everything, there _was_ something deadly and dangerous and twisted wearing the mask of Irene. Those particular fears were validated, and she could keep her own dark secret for a little bit longer. And yet, if Irene was nothing but an elaborate web of lies spun around the snakeskins of her previous life, what was Joan? Had she ever been real? Could she really say she wasn't the same?

Joan liked to think that she had turned over a new leaf after her defeat and disgrace in the duel with the vengeful Bride. She had nearly died at the hands of this woman who was now styling herself the Napoleon of crime. It had made her realize that the life she'd been living was no longer the one she wanted. She had seen new possibilities in the neat stitches that crowned her head, and vanished in pursuit of them. She'd fled halfway around the world and started anew, this time armed with a scalpel instead of a sword. Too late she'd realized that her hands were too used to dealing death to be trusted handling life.

Twice disgraced, she did everything she could to put the past behind her once again, to forget, forget, forget. She'd done a pretty good job of it, too. She'd dabbled in the abuse of  various substances, enough to blur her memories, but never enough to lose control, lest she fall back into the rhythms of her old life. When she looked in sadness on the ones who did lose all control, she found unexplored and unexpected depths of empathy within herself. She managed to make a living trying to help them. She told herself that what she did mattered, that _she_ mattered, that she had changed. She never quite believed it.

She had floated aimlessly through her life until she snagged on the unlikely anchor of Sherlock. He saw so many of her flaws and so much of her personal darkness, but he saw them in someone new, someone good, someone worth redeeming. He thought what she did was "amazing." He saw _Joan_ , and for the first time, she truly believed that Joan existed.

Moriarty's arrival threatened to destroy everything she had made of her new life. Joan's past was crashing into her present with a vengeance, just like Sherlock's. It wasn't as if she didn't deserve her former colleague's ire, heavens knew the woman had every reason to kill her a hundred times over. Their first confrontation had simply been the repayment of a favor in kind. However, Joan would be damned if she would just sit there and let her slice her life apart again.

 

***

 

"You're not afraid of me," Moriarty said mockingly. The genteel tinkle of silverware and crystal belied the tension in the air between them.

"Too angry to be afraid," she countered. She bit back the rest of her words then, unsure if they were Joan's or those of someone whose name she had deliberately forgotten. She was afraid to remember, afraid to become that person again. She blustered some excuse about being safe in a crowded restaurant, only to be met with Moriarty's gleeful grin and her boasts of the murders she'd orchestrated in such places.

"I must say, you're the last person I expected to encounter here. Or anywhere, for that matter. You were supposed to be dead. So why are you here playing pet detective to dear Sherlock?" Joan held her tongue, trusting neither herself nor Moriarty. She regarded the woman warily, but met her brilliant blue stare with a challenge. "As far as I can determine, you're just another white man's exotic mascot. Same as always." Moriarty smiled like she had her teeth sunken into a ripe piece of fruit.

Another memory struck her in an instant, lightning-bright in her mind. A crowded table, a sudden shocked silence, the firm wood of the table under her swift feet and the soft song of a piece of steel sliding through flesh and bone. Blood. Internally, she both reveled and recoiled. No; the ghost of O-Ren Ishii within her reveled, craving the same punishment for the impudence of the blonde seated across from her, the one who had bested her once upon a time. Oh, she knew all about murder, in fine restaurants, in darkened bedrooms, in the delicate snow. It was Joan who recoiled, Joan who was appalled at such violence - and the response proved that Joan was _real_.

Shaken, Joan forced herself to inhale and exhale normally despite her sudden shortness of breath. She came to herself to find Moriarty staring at her shrewdly, seeking any weakness, tossing her golden head and asking impertinent questions to rattle her defenses. When had she become so petty and manipulative? She let O-Ren glare daggers at the woman through her eyes one last time, before shutting her away forever. If she wanted to keep this new life, she had to fight and win this battle as Joan, not O-Ren.

When she failed to retaliate as O-Ren would have, Moriarty's smirk showed that she had deduced her weakness, this self-imposed circumscription of her abilites. Evidently Moriarty felt Joan wasn't worth much without recourse to O-Ren's polished brutality. She soon took her leave, turning her back to make an oh-so-tempting target in her sleek black and blue blazer. A well-thrown knife would kill Joan as instantly as it would kill Moriarty, the snake-turned-spider, and they both knew it. So Joan threw words instead.

"You're afraid of him."

Her verbal attack struck home, earning her an affronted over-the-shoulder glare and a condescending "My dear Watson." She still had all of the Black Mamba's arrogance. "I'm afraid of what he might force me to do."

Joan seethed, but she was still Joan.

 

***

 

Moriarty froze where she sat on the edge of Sherlock's hospital bed. Her face was blank with dumbfounded surprise in the dim light.  She seemed unable to believe that she had been bested, and by Joan of all people. Experience had only ever led her to believe that she was the best. She cast her eyes down in regret, then looked up to meet Joan's with grudging respect. Joan stood tall and steadfast, proud but grounded. This time, it was her rival with all the resources of the underworld at her disposal, and it was Joan who had challenged and defeated her - and she had done it without spilling a single drop of blood.

Moriarty should never have risked coming anywhere near the hospital. The woman had become overconfident, and it had allowed the twin forces of self-satisfaction and self-preservation guiding her become unbalanced. Moriarty's pride and arrogance were her downfall - even as they had been O-Ren's. But Joan had learned from O-Ren's mistakes and risen from her ashes, a phoenix burning in a new life.

As she was cuffed and led away, Moriarty leaned in close to Joan to say softly, "You know this isn't over while both of us are alive."

Joan met her gaze evenly. "Apparently we're both hard to kill."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visual reference for the Queensboro Bridge (the one you can see from the brownstone rooftop): http://www.urban75.org/photos/newyork/queensboro-bridge-roosevelt-tram-nyc.html


	2. Golden Brown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for Joan to come clean to her partner about her past.

It was inevitable, Joan supposed. She might have been the last person alive to know about Moriarty's daughter, but even the best kept secrets become vulnerable when their keepers cannot to tend to them.

Joan had told no one about the girl, not even Sherlock. Not only was it not her secret to tell, but there was no surer way to attract Moriarty's wrath and break the uneasy, temporary truce between them. However, she _had_ chosen to tell him about her own dark past.

She had waited for the immediate shock of rediscovering Irene and losing her again in the worst possible way to wear off. Sherlock finally noticed Joan's uncharacteristic somberness and greater-than-usual reticence a week after Moriarty's arrest.

"What is troubling you, Watson?" he asked, eyeing her from the armchair next to the fireplace. He drummed the fingers of one hand silently against his thigh. "I am well aware that I am not the only one affected by the events of the past few weeks, but, not to belittle the distress which you experienced during the whole ordeal, your lingering malaise seems unduly extreme." His voice sounded uncomfortable, unaccustomed to openly expressing genuine concern.

Joan gave him a small smile without much warmth. She gently closed her book and shifted where she sat to tuck her feet under her legs, curling sideways into the corner of the red couch. "I wondered how long it would take you to notice." The brownstone's usually warm light now seemed dim.

Sherlock looked at her sharply. "What is it?" His entire body tightened almost imperceptibly as he narrowed his focus on her with his piercing grey eyes.

Joan sighed and pulled her red house sweater a little closer around her shoulders, a vain attempt to fend off the slow dread that had been building all week. "First, I want you to know that I don't want to change anything between us. What we have right now means more to me than you can know." His face was static, unreadable."But there are some things, well, a lot of things you don't know about me, and you should, but knowing them is going to change things."

"Watson, you don't need -" he interrupted.

"I want to," Joan cut him off. "I can't justify not telling you to myself anymore." She stopped abruptly, unsure of how to proceed. She had turned ideas over and over in her head all week, unable to decide how and when and what would be the best and least stressful way to do this. Well, she'd waited to allow Sherlock to choose the when, and that when was now. She met his gaze, broke away in intense discomfort, then locked eyes with him again. He blinked slowly and deliberately, as if to reassure her that this wasn't a staring contest.

May as well keep it simple and start with the basics, she thought.

"Joan Watson is not the name I grew up with," she said quietly. "It was the name I chose years before I met you, and it's the name I choose now. I was once called -" she paused to swallow the lump of nervousness in her throat. "O-Ren Ishii. I was once the leader of the Yakuza crime syndicate in Tokyo."

Sherlock stared.

Joan swallowed again and continued. "My family was killed by a Yakuza boss when I was nine. The people you met are just hired actors who think I'm a pitiful orphan with impressions to maintain. I got the idea from you and Alistair, actually. Although Mary - that actually is her name - she likes to check up on me now and then. She took pretending to be my mother a little too seriously." She was getting off topic and avoiding the matter at hand. She inhaled, squared her shoulders, and resolutely plowed forward.

"I became an assassin; got my revenge for my family. Soon enough though, I ended up working for the same people that wrecked my life. It's hard to find employment outside of organized crime in that profession. I was good; one of the best. And I could lead. So I did. Then, fifteen years ago, a woman nearly killed me. She didn't use that name then, but she was Moriarty." She caught herself once again running her fingers along the scars hidden by her hair, and snatched her hand away. He would notice, but he didn't need the details, not yet. "Things like that change a person. I didn't know who I was anymore, and I hated what I saw, what I'd made of my life. I left everything behind in Japan and came here. I became a doctor; I wanted to heal instead of hurt. Then - well, you know what happened with my patient.

"I'd tried so hard to turn over a new leaf and cut myself off from my past, but it felt like violence and death followed me everywhere. I started using drugs to forget. I didn't quite lose control, but it was a close thing. I got scared when I saw people fall into that hole and never come back out. I somehow managed to drag myself out before I got in too deep, but you know how rare that is. I didn't know there was anything left in me that could _feel_ anything - I never did allow myself to care about people, not before, not even when I was a doctor - but seeing people lose themselves that way, it hurt. That's where I got the idea of being a sober companion. Maybe I could help people that way instead. Besides, focusing on their problems sounded a lot better than thinking about mine. Only a half-noble motive, but it seemed a reasonable enough direction to take. I could maybe start trying to make up for all the harm I've done in my life." She shrugged. "Then I met you."

Joan ducked her head and let her hair fall to hide her face, staring at the book in her lap. She traced the faded gold embossment on the fabric cover with her fingertip. Sherlock was still silent. "Whatever good I've done in your life, Sherlock - and I know I have - you've done so much more for me. You saw so many of the things that are wrong with me, so many of the mistakes I've made, but you believed in me and thought I was worth inviting into your life and your work. You believed the lie I've been trying to tell myself for so many years, and you've helped make it true. You've helped me become the person I wanted to be when I took this name." Her voice felt so, so small. "I help people now. It won't ever cancel out all the awful things I've done in my life, but eventually I might do enough good to balance it out. And for that, I owe it to you to tell you the truth, even if it changes everything." She closed her eyes in the ringing silence. "Say something."

A moment's silence more. Then, "This is a great deal of new information to process, Watson." A pause. He made a few tiny, garbled noises, as if changing the words after already starting a sentence. He stopped, then started again. "However, I wish to impress upon you - that is, the sentiments you just described - they are quite familiar to me. I think you underestimate the impact you have had on my life."

Joan looked up, eyes wide in surprise. _That_ was the first thing he needed to say? He avoided her gaze, staring into his lap as she had only moments ago. However, his eyes were restless, and they met hers briefly before flickering away across the walls and bookshelves. Was she projecting her own pitiful experiences onto him, or did she see a familiar kind of bemused compassion behind his grey gaze?

Sherlock seemed to be struggling to find more words. "Ir- Moriarty. You said you knew her, before? Why did you not -"

Joan shook her head immediately. "I would have told you. But I didn't start remembering until I saw her that day. By the time we met, I'd managed to make myself forget most things, even my old name. Enough to convince myself that memories were just dreams or déja vu. The memories came back fast, though, once seeing her triggered them. I should have told you earlier that there was something wrong about her, but I was scared, and confused. I'm sorry."

Sherlock nodded slowly. "I understand." He made as if to speak, then stopped. Joan watched words forming and re-forming in his mind. "I wanted to ask if you ever knew Irene to be real, but you've already said she tried to _murder_ you long before she met me, so I suppose not."

Joan tilted her head to think, reaching back into her old life's memories. They were slow to come to her now, as if thick and viscous, but they were certainly still there. "No," she said slowly, "the woman I remember was always much more like Moriarty. If she was ever someone like Irene, she was unrecognizable by the time we met. I suppose it _might_ be possible, though. How many times can someone be remade before they fall apart?" Once had certainly been enough for Joan.

Sherlock sat forward in his chair and winced slightly; the bullet hole in his shoulder was still healing, and he had refused to wear the arm sling any longer. He clasped his hands gingerly, elbows resting on his knees. "Why did she try to kill you?"

Joan grinned wryly. "Why does anyone want to kill a mob boss?" She felt her face fall. "No, it was personal. I did her a wrong turn, back then. She had every right to want revenge." She gave Sherlock a look to forestall further questions in that direction. Telling that tale would only risk Moriarty's anger if - when - she found out, and it would put Sherlock in a dangerous position to sympathize with her.

"Will she make another attempt on your life?" Sherlock asked.

"I don't know," Joan said honestly. "The person she used to be would have. She came to kill me and left me for dead. But we're not the same people anymore. I can't predict her moves. I don't even know what _I'm_ going to do next." Joan suddenly looked at Sherlock with apprehension. "You're taking this a lot more lightly than I expected."

Sherlock finally brought his searching eyes back to hers. Joan quailed, unbalanced by a thousand doubts and fears, but didn't break the contact. "This is... surprising, yet not entirely unexpected to me, Watson," he said. "I have always known you are more than you seem. Even to me. Perhaps especially to me." His fingers continued to twitch, yet more slowly now. Joan held her breath.

"I am perhaps even more open to strange revelations than usual, Watson," he said. "My world has been recently overturned, and while the process was quite painful, it has afforded me a sense of resolution and a certain clarity of perspective. While the divulgence of your colorful past is far from anything I might have suspected, your deception is next to nothing of a betrayal compared to the lies I have recently endured. Although I must now rethink some of my previous assumptions regarding your character, this does not change the fact that our relationship was founded in sincerity. Furthermore, you have chosen to discuss this in the interest of honesty within our partnership. It hardly bears comparison to Moriarty's deliberate manipulations and emotional blackmail."

Joan nearly sagged with relief. She hadn't allowed herself to dwell on her fear of potential rejection, but that hadn't prevented it from taking its psychosomatic toll. However, she was no better prepared for this apparent easy acceptance. Sherlock's unwillingness to draw the obvious comparison between her and Moriarty left her uneasy, and she felt the tension of anxiety winding its way up her spine again.

"Maybe I didn't do what she did to _you_ , Sherlock, but we're not all that unalike." She had to be sure he knew what he was in for before she could continue the partnership in good faith. "Or at least, we weren't then. It's funny," Joan mused, "We were actually close once. Almost like sisters. I guess you don't reach the top of any field together without having something in common." She wondered if one or more of those things in common had drawn Sherlock to both of them. What were the odds of the same person being involved - albeit in multiple senses - with two different members of the same elite assassin squad?

"Nonsense, Watson," Sherlock said briskly. "You may have been a criminal, but you've never been as cruel and as vicious as she -"

"No. No," Joan said. She felt backed into a corner with the pedestal upon which Irene once stood pressing into her shoulderblades. "Sherlock, I _was_ her. In Japan. _I_ was the spider in the web of crime there." She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. He had to understand. "I - I once cut off a man's head because he questioned my authority. Before that, I was an assassin, just like she was. That's how we met. I - I've probably killed as many people as she has." And enjoyed it, came the unbidden but inevitable memory. She shuddered. She made her own skin, Joan's skin, crawl.

"Joan." His voice was so soft, taking the gentle tone he used when questioning their most shaken witnesses. "However much you may have in common with her, you are _not_ her. Any of her. If you cannot trust that I do not say this out of mere misguided sentiment, place your trust in my faculties. When I was with - Irene, I had absolutely no inkling that anything was wrong, because Moriarty designed it that way. With you, I have noticed minor inconsistencies - never enough to worry me, only enough to pique my curiosity. The courageous admission of the tale of your past interlocks neatly with my observations. The way you stubbornly resist taking self-defense lessons, and the way you almost certainly faked your ineptitude at single-stick: you were concealing your martial training. The way you dislike having me near when you perform an autopsy, looking far more nervously at me than at the cadaver you cut upon. I realize now, you were looking at my neck, the gaps between my ribs; targets you were trained to see, places vulnerable to a thin blade like a scalpel.

"However, it is these very flaws in your façade, as it were, that convince me that it is not a façade at all, but a true face riddled with insecurities. Perhaps your identity bears more scars than most people, but you remain the person I have come to know. Perhaps someone more conflicted and guilt-ridden than I suspected, but knowing your past does not change my experience of you; it merely casts new light upon it, another layer of complexity. Though I can see that you bear many shadows in your heart or your soul or whatever it is that makes up your essence, your every action shows me that you are still whole. What I see now is only a sharper, fuller version of the Joan Watson I already know, and I still consider her my kind, brilliant, conscientious, remarkable partner. My offer of partnership still stands. If it would ease your mind, I renew that offer."

Joan didn't realize she had been shaking until the hand resting on her shoulder stilled her tremors. She gingerly pulled her face from her hands to see Sherlock's outline standing before her, silhouetted in the warm golden light of the brownstone. She gently grasped the hand on her shoulder with her own, lifting it to press against the side of her face. She closed her eyes and sighed with exhaustion as most of her tension sloughed away. A few silent tears trailed over her cheeks as she let her head rest in his palm. She let him caress her hair lightly with his other hand, heard his small intake of breath as his fingers ran across the scars on her scalp. She sat very still as he tentatively and ever so delicately traced them in the perfect circle that ringed her head like a crown. Then he went back to brushing his fingers through her hair.

"That's from when she - when I nearly died," Joan said quietly. "She had a sword. Well, I did too, so I guess it's all fair."

Sherlock chuckled. "Perhaps you could avoid starting any more feuds with former assassin colleagues from here on out," he said.

Joan nodded and slumped sideways against the arm of the couch. Sherlock stroked her hair one last time, then clasped his hands behind his back. "I couldn't start anything else even if I wanted to. The others are all gone now." She'd done her research before fleeing Japan: Moriarty had killed them all before making a new name for herself.

"Well then, we have only one spider to keep our eyes on," Sherlock said.

"She's not gone, you know," said Joan, eyes half-closed. "She'll be out sooner or later. No matter what cell they stick her in, we'll be seeing her again."

"Then we know to prepare ourselves in advance," Sherlock said. He crossed the room to fetch a throw blanket from where it lay haphazardly across the ottoman. He brought it back and held it out to her. "Get some rest, Watson. You need it as much as I, perhaps more."

Joan _was_ exhausted, physically, emotionally, and mentally. She stretched out on the couch and let him throw the blanket over her. He made as if to close the front blinds, but she halted him. "You can leave it open. I want to nap in the sun."

Sherlock nodded. "Very well." He quietly left the living room. She heard him go down the stairs. Joan felt herself falling asleep to the faint sounds of him puttering around in the kitchen. She'd feel a bit guilty if she found Yorkshire pudding downstairs later, but this had been necessary. At least he was channeling his energy in a constructive direction, and at least they were on the same page now. She pulled off her red sweater, wadded it up to use as a pillow, and tucked it under her head. For the first time in over a week, she slept deeply, basking in the warm daylight.


End file.
